


Dreamer

by BlueRedSaltySeas



Category: Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)
Genre: Angsty tinged Fluff, Canon-Typical Behavior, Cheesy, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, Its mostly cheesy fluff tho, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Post-Canon Fix-It, Swearing, Takes place after Temperance, Wrote this to cope with the Temperance ending which is my fave out of the ones offered, because my V is a gonk, because these two deserve to have that okay, but V thinks it is, its this game and its johnny i mean this would seem ooc if i didnt have the f word in it, until gasp it is indeed requited, written intentionally to be cheesy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-17 11:14:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28599036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueRedSaltySeas/pseuds/BlueRedSaltySeas
Summary: She knew before that she was hallucinating his presence when she saw him. At first an annoying production of the biochip, and then a comforting one. She was simply hallucinating whenever he had touched her, hallucinating whenever he seemed to move things around her. It had become an odd habit, whenever he disappeared from her view, to check if he were still there, as if it would’ve changed anything. It was always disconcerting somehow when he wasn’t. It’s the last thing she remembers doing before taking the plunge beyond the wall, his eyes locked on her as she walked away, seemingly forever.And yet here she is, not forever gone. And there he is, shooing Nibbles off the clothes and décor, picking at a dark t-shirt that lay on top, looking as if he has half a mind to refold it.It still feels surreal.
Relationships: Johnny Silverhand/Female V
Comments: 7
Kudos: 147





	Dreamer

**Author's Note:**

> This is written with the idea of Johnny getting his own body recovered and V having her own back- whether that is via cloning or cyber splitting, etc., bottom line is- they’re okay. How they got there is up to you (Or CDPR in DLC… because… please?) its also cheesy as hell honestly im so sorry but it helped me cope.

  
  
It had been roughly half a year, according to her friends, that she’d been gone. Though to them, she hadn’t been too far gone. After all, they still saw her face, heard her voice, but it wasn’t her, it was Johnny. The man who saved her life; who really did. He was the reason she was back, back in a flesh body, back with the occasional migraine and auras of data. A leftover side effect from being beyond the black wall.

Her body still feels alien at times. Johnny feels alien too; his touch before cold and sterile now warm and full of life. Life that they somehow both fought for, fought and chased and clutched tightly, even when it seemed that no matter what they did, they’d lose it forever. She’d somehow made a fearful kind of peace with it in Mikoshi only for Johnny to continue the fight in her stead.

As she rounds the corner from her stash, she spies Johnny as he sits on her couch, a smoke in hand, glaring at Nibbles who is busy making a bed in the clothes beside him, messing up the neatly folded pile. “Hey, pass me that box will ya’?” V calls out, balancing knick-knacks atop a pile of books that sit awkwardly at her waist, pinned there and digging uncomfortably into her skin, but it’s a sensation and it feels louder than it did before she died and came back so she welcomes it anyway. Wordlessly, Johnny brings her an empty cardboard box, setting it down in front of her, taking the pile from her to stack inside it. “Just about done?”

“Just got what’s on the couch to pack.”

“I’ll get it.”

“Thanks- hey, careful, don’t break my shit.”

Johnny snorts, glancing over his shoulder at her as she turns to the stash room, then back again, habitually, to check if he’s still there.

And he is.

She knew before that she was hallucinating his presence when she saw him. At first an annoying production of the biochip, and then a comforting one. She was simply hallucinating whenever he had touched her, hallucinating whenever he seemed to move things around her. It had become an odd habit whenever he disappeared from her view to check to see if he were still there, as if it would’ve changed anything. It was always disconcerting somehow when he wasn’t. It’s the last thing she remembers doing before taking the plunge beyond the wall, his eyes locked on her as she walked away, seemingly forever.

And yet here she is, not forever gone. And there he is, shooing Nibbles off the clothes and décor, picking at a dark t-shirt that lay on top, looking as if he has half a mind to refold it.

It still feels surreal.

* * *

They work for another half hour, until her apartment is as bare as the day she moved in and the boxes sit out in that old Hella EC-D of hers. She finds herself thankful that Johnny kept it safe with the Aldecaldos while she was away. Panam had, of course, kept it in preem shape, for the day V returned. Was she away during that time? Dead? She still isn’t quite sure what to call it. She’d meant it to be death. She’d been so terrified of dying, so scared of nothingness. And then what did she do? She took a bullet for Johnny. And he’d managed to claw it out, rebuild her piece by piece, save her.

“There’s one place I wanna’ stop before we head out.” Johnny states as he rounds the corner from her stash room, likely double checking if they’d gotten everything, while she stands in the doorway, Nibbles in her arms, taking it all in. She still remembers the housewarming party- Jackie, Mama Welles, Misty, Vik and herself, cooped up with tequila and chili and tamales and mole and all the best food Mama Welles could think up. They drank and laughed, one of the few times Mama Welles tolerated Misty’s presence. It’s hard to imagine the distant, cold feeling they carried before when now Misty had become a focus for her as she coped slowly with the loss of Jackie, and she would be coping forever. V would too in her own way. She was still in that garage mentally sometimes.

“V?”

“Sorry, yea, uh-…“

“You alright?” Johnny asks, a knit in his brow as he approaches her, and she pulls back just a step instinctively. _Something sharp near your heart_. She feels it pang harshly. Johnny stops as if he’s hit a wall and she isn’t sure what to make of the flash of hurt she’s almost sure she’s hallucinated on his face.

“Yea, just… ya’ know, taking it in. Gonna’ be the last I see of the place.” She states slowly, wistfully, eyeing the corner of the room where she’d first seen Johnny, him banging his head against the wall, like a caged animal. It almost doesn’t seem to mesh with the Johnny she sees now who runs his hand through his hair, turns to eye the room and, seemingly, the same spot near the bed.

A long moment passes before Johnny finally breaks the silence. “It’ll have some naïve, gonk merc eyeing to become a Night City Legend in here this time next week, I’m sure.”

V chuckles then eyes the city scape. The sun is resting atop the skyline, maybe an hour or two before it’ll disappear and leave for the night. It casts nostalgia-filled golden hues through the apartment that feels strangely ready to be left behind. “Hope it works out for ‘em.”

“Having regrets?” Johnny muses almost tactically.

“Nah…” She musters the courage to look at him, catching his dark eyed gaze in her own, a cryptic look in his eyes that she can’t quite place. “No regrets.”

That cryptic look unlocks, drops and morphs into one of… almost a guilt-ridden graciousness. Something she only recognizes because it was there, in a way, just an echo before, in Mikoshi when they’d finally made it to Alt, only then there was anger too, when she said she’d go. Now the anger is gone and what space remains in its absence only grows sadder.

“Come on, let’s head out. Time we hit the road.” V says, a bit more harshly than she means to. Johnny dips his head, eyes the space near her bed once more, then turns on his heel to follow her out the door.

* * *

They take separate cars, Johnny in his Porsche, her in the EC-D, each packed almost so full that its hard to see out of the rear window. She follows behind him, loyally following the Samurai writing on the bumper until eventually he pulls aside to park. She figured they’d head to Afterlife, to maybe say goodbye to Rogue, or any bar for one last drink, or maybe even that kid’s place he’d mentioned. Steve, she thinks it was. He hadn’t told her much, but enough to know she’d done good in her choice at the end of it all, the _beginning_ of it all. The fact that she was driving now, feeling the sun on her face once more, the roar of an engine beneath her, the wind whipping through her hair, was even more proof that she’d made the right call saving him. Dying for him.

But now, they park at the Columbarium of all places. She watches as Johnny opens his car door, swings his feet to rest on the asphalt, leans on his knees. He runs both hands through his hair, takes off his sunglasses and tosses them onto the dash before finally leaving the car behind in favor of approaching hers.

“You coming?” He asks as she finally pushes her door open, her features twisted in confusion.

“Why are we here?”

“Just… come on, V, don’t be stubborn, for once in your life.”

V snorts, then follows him reluctantly up the steps. She knows Jackie is here in these halls. She visited once and only ever the once. She’d made her peace, or at least as much as she was likely to. There would always be a distinct Jackie shaped void in her heart, she’s accepted it though. She’s sure he can’t have brought her out this way for that. “Is this about Jackie, Johnny?” She finally asks when Johnny’s steps start to slow enough for her to catch up. He glances over at her, peering down at her with a guarded gaze.

“No, it’s about you.”

“What?”

After a moment, his footsteps trailing slower to an eventual stop in front of a niche, he stands in front of it. She slowly approaches him, stands closer than she has since she’s been back, since their first and only hug, she’s sure of it, so she can see whose grave it is—

Oh.

_Oh._

“Johnny…” She words breathlessly. If being alive felt surreal then seeing her own grave felt like a punch in the gut. She reads over her name then below it where written simply is the word: dreamer.

Dreamer.

With a slow breath she knows she isn’t meant to notice, Johnny accesses it and the small drawer greets him with an smooth _whoosh_. Inside the drawer is just one thing; the small necklace Misty had made her, with the bullet nestled inside, held carefully yet strongly in white string. Johnny wraps his fingers around it, holds it out to her. “Just… wanted to see if you’d want this back.”

“You… you got me a niche?”

“You saw my grave. Apparently, I’m here too- no body of course, thanks to Arasaka…” Johnny lets out a dark ‘hmph’, then meets her eyes with a ghost of a somber smile. “Look at us, two ghosts back from the dead.”

“You wanted me to be remembered.” She states bluntly, taking the charm from him, letting it rest in her palm, her eyes working over the knots in the string like the ones in her head.

“Of course I did…” He clenches and unclenches his jaw, ducks his head when his gaze falters to the charm in her hand for too long. The thing that started it all, a bullet to the head. Her eyes flick up to eye Johnny who twists his fingers anxiously; tension from wanting a smoke in between them instead of the empty air.

The only good thing that had come from that stupid heist.

“You deserved to be remembered, in some way, somehow…It was the least I could do when it all went down. After what you did for me.” He states slowly, almost in a meandering, rambling sort of way, but the words are heavy and poignant all the same. “Fuck, V, this is… fucking stupid but… I don’t know, didn’t feel right leaving without you at least knowin’ about this, deciding on it.”

“It wasn’t stupid, Johnny, this is…” She looks at her name, ‘dreamer’, turns it over and over in her mind, then looks to him, his face a mix of unsureness and a tinge of regret. “This is sweet. Really.” She offers him a smile before turning to the box, holding the keepsake up once more before she lets it slowly fall into the drawer. “But, I’m good. It can stay, with your grave, Jack’s…I don’t need it to remember.” Then with a breath, “I got you, that’s good enough for me.”

Johnny eyes her, then finally smiles, warm and bright, as he shakes his head. “Shit, that was cheesy even for you.”

She grins, reaches out without thinking, lands her knuckles against his shoulder lightly only she can’t bring herself to pull back, not when his skin is warm and real and solid underneath her touch, doesn’t flicker and falter. Instead, she lets her fist unfurl, resting her palm against him. He looks down at her, gaze guarded and careful and yet vulnerable and she mirrors it- both afraid they’ll collapse and fade away if they move, if they blink.

“This just… means a lot, Johnny, more than I can probably put into words. At least non-cheesy words.”

He smiles softly, and she moves her hand up to the back of his neck, standing on her tip-toes to quickly press herself against him hard, like the chance won’t come again. She presses against him, feeling him tense, real and alive, and the shockwave of it all is enough to make her want to scream and sob and smile all at once. She feels his arms slowly snake around her waist, feels him press his head against hers, the ends of his hair tickling her cheek and it all just somehow feels like _home_. When a few seconds too many pass, and she’s done dreaming of what could be, she tries to pull away but the dreams of what could be take her and instead, she presses her lips against his cheek, not eager to hear the ribbing he’ll give her for something so chaste and cliché. “Seriously, thank you.” She peers up at him, then slowly pulls back until his arms slip from around her, leaving a hole in her chest somehow. “We better hit the road, it’s getting late.”

“Yea.” He offers quietly.

She turns, takes a few steps though his footfalls lag just enough to make her glance back to check that he’s following her.

Except then he grabs her shoulder, spins her to face him-

His lips crash against hers, his metal hand moving to cup her face, his free one wrapping around her waist to pull her against him. She doesn’t move, freezes up, because all that hits her is _him_ \- his beard against her skin, the comfortable coolness of the metal hand against her cheek, the pressure in the small of her back, the way his hand fists the fabric of her shirt—

And then all at once, everything is gone and she thinks this is it, whatever this was, it’s gone, stolen, never there to begin with; she has to still be in cyberspace and all everything has been is one big hallucination, dreams of need and regrets—

“Fuck, V, I--… Shit.”

His voice crashes against her ears, breathy and panicked and she opens her eyes to see him pacing, turned from her. She reaches forward, calls for him as she grips his forearm and he reluctantly meets her gaze, his own wide with fear, like she’s going to yell or scream or leave him here at her grave, alone; like he’s finally managed to fuck up what they have.

“Johnny, fucking kiss me again.” Is all she offers as she wraps her arms around his neck, stands on her tiptoes to meet his mouth and he obliges just as eagerly. This time, it is a deep and yearning and slow thing, feeling and feeling and focusing on that feeling; the warmth, the intimacy, the love that somewhere along the line started and grew and became all-encompassing.

When she finally pulls away, she mumbles something that she means to be something- his name or an urging to leave or even a ‘wow’ but they all sort of jumble together into a barely audible hum of shock and contentment and amazement. Johnny swallows thickly, his arms lingering around her waist, though his metal hand moves up and down her back slowly. “Mm. Agree, I think.”

She lets out a winded laugh and looks up at him with a smile that feels as wide as an ocean and warm as the sunrays that just make it through the cracks of the towering graves, disappearing slowly, but graciously. His eyes are warm, tender, soft, and just a bit hooded.

“Think we oughta’ go. It’s getting late, but we can hit up Noah’s hotel for the night.”

“That’s not that far. Thought the plan was to drive most of the night?”

“Yeah but after this? I don’t think either of us will last that long.” She teases coyly though she lets her hand wander across his skin up to cup his cheek, her thumb stroking slowly. It’s intimate and not enough and yet more than she could ever ask for.

Johnny chuckles, his tongue darting out over his lips before he slowly moves a hand to mirror hers; cupping her face in his palm, watching as she curls her face into it like she’s touch starved and for him she _is_.

“Guess you’re right. Though honestly… well, waited this long for that and it was more than worth it, so I think you’re just worth the wait.”

“Now who’s being cheesy, ya’ gonk?” V chastises with a grin, moves to grip his metal hand in hers before leading him back to the cars.

As she settles into her seat, her body buzzing with adrenaline and change on the horizon, she eyes her glovebox. She opens it, digs around until metal meets her fingertips and she pulls out Johnny’s dog tags. With a smile, she puts them on. She wouldn’t need that little bullet to remember the heist, to be thankful she lived, to have as a lucky charm.

She had all the reminder she needed, and her reminder was honking his horn at her impatiently to get her to drive ahead of him. She flips him off with a smile as she passes slowly by. He gives her a broad smile, flips her off in kind and she knows she’s on her way home.


End file.
